Help - laptop problem!

naughty_10382

I have a Sony Vaio laptop, think the model number is VGN-NR10ES, it's running Vista.

As it was shutting down the other night, the screen went blank. I thought nothing of it and used the power button to switch it off.

Last night, put the laptop on and the screen about 'start in safe mode' etc came up. This always happens when I use the power button to power off so I chose 'start windows normally'. The 'microsoft corporation' logo came up withg the little scrolly bar thing (hard to describe but hopefully someone will know what I'm on about! ) then it went blank.

I followed some instructions in the troubleshooting guide, but they didn't work, so i kept on turning it off, then on, hoping for the 'safe mode' screen.

Eventually, another window came up, similar to the 'safe mode' one, with 2 options: Start Windows Normally or Start System Repair. I chose system repair, and a window came up that had a few things on, but said 'attempting to repair disk error. This may take over an hour to complete'

That was at 2:30am. At 2:30pm today I gave up as it wasn't doing anything, just a blue scrolling bit, there was no progress bar or anything similar and the computer was totally silent. I switched it off then back on again and set the system repair going again.

I'm using my parents computer, and hoping someone can help.

I do have recovery disks, I made these when i first got the laptop. But, in my infinite wisdom :rolleyes: I've never backed any files up so I'm assuming everything on there will be lost should i have to use these disks.

Is there anything anyone can suggest? Should I leave the system repair as it is, or give up and just run the recovery disks? I have seen people talking about using F10 and I will give that a go. The troubleshooting guide was full of jargon that I don't get!

Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry it's so long!

ccsurvival

Could be that your hard drive is knackered....

If it still works, to save your data do the following:

Download a cd bootable linux Operating System.

Boot your laptop off the cd and let linux start up.

It will be very intuitive and windows looking so dont get put off

From there, see if you can copy all your stored files on your main laptop drive to a backup stick or drive.

Once you have backed up, try the recovery disks you have.

naughty_10382

Thanks. Yes, the laptop does still power on, it just doesn't boot up

If it is the hard drive, what could have caused it to happen?

GunJack

Alternatively, your lappy may be infected with lots of nasties...when you switch it on, keep tapping F8 and select safe mode with networking...that should boot it up (with a bare-bones desktop, i.e. probably nothing showing on it ) and attempt to download Malwarebytes Antimalware and see if you can run it...

BTW, you're never meant to shut it down by using the power button, ALWAYS by the Shutdown option....many of your problems may well have been compounded by you turning it off like this...

naughty_10382

But how else was I meant to close it down when the screen had gone blank and it wasn't working...?

Update - tried downloading Linux using my old laptop, used all my internet limit for the whole of April and it didn't download completely - froze at 94%.

Tried F10, searched the hardware for problems, it checked the CPU etc and found nothing.

I tried using the recovery disks last night, and even they didn't work - I got an error up saying "Error: 333" - anyone know what this is???

macman

naughty_10382 wrote: »

But how else was I meant to close it down when the screen had gone blank and it wasn't working...?

Update - tried downloading Linux using my old laptop, used all my internet limit for the whole of April and it didn't download completely - froze at 94%.

Tried F10, searched the hardware for problems, it checked the CPU etc and found nothing.

I tried using the recovery disks last night, and even they didn't work - I got an error up saying "Error: 333" - anyone know what this is???

I think the reference was to when you said in your first post that you often shut down this way. If the system was failing to shut down normally then this would have been an early indication that something was amiss. Repeatedly shutting down by holding down the power button can cause hard disk damage and OS corruptions.

GunJack

macman wrote: »

I think the reference was to when you said in your first post that you often shut down this way. If the system was failing to shut down normally then this would have been an early indication that something was amiss. Repeatedly shutting down by holding down the power button can cause hard disk damage and OS corruptions.

Absolutely right.....

As for the original fault, I've just sorted a lappy displaying similar symptoms...it took a while, but there was no hardware fault, it was just overloaded with virii and spyware...